New player-classes are fine and dandy, but you'll want something fresh and exciting to hack and blow up as well, right? Well, in addition to the new prestige classes, expect some new baddies to bash in the Undermountain, including Beholders (eye see you!), Mind Flayers, Shadow Dragons, a bevy of Golems including those of the Mithral, Adamantium, and Demonflesh variety, plus the ever-popular and lovable Gellatinous Cube (well, as lovable as an acidic glob of goo can get, I suppose).

Because of the alliance of sorts the Drow have with certain otherwise hateful creatures, you'll find some of these new monsters in a variety of roles. You may encounter a Beholder merchant for example, or a Mind Flayer NPC who lets you in on a bit of the history behind Undermountain.

In addition to a cornucopia of new high-level spells, casters will also enjoy a new creature of sorts -- a tiny Beholder-like familiar aptly named an Eyeball. He's a cute little guy, but he's also pretty handy in dispatching foes at higher levels. Expect over 50 new feats and a handful of new skills in the game as well, many which deal with crafting and creating items. New skills include craft armor and craft weapon, which is good for those of you not happy with store-bought goodies, and new feats include brew potion and scribe scroll.

The team has put a lot of time into enhancing the graphical appeal of the game as well, which is saying a lot since Neverwinter Nights is still beautiful to look at. One slight -- although noteworthy -- addition is that of robes, which waft and wave as your character moves. Shirts and pants may be fine for common farmers, but what's a true spellcaster doing walking around without his fanciful robe blowing in the wind? The robes are brand new, but the entire game is getting a slight facelift. The items and character models in Hordes contain about one and half times more polygons than the original art from Neverwinter Nights, so you can expect smoother, less blocky looking objects.

One of the big requests from the community was that there weren't enough portraits to accurately portray the exact player-character ever created. This time around Bioware is adding a whole set of generic portraits which display items that represent certain classes, like a sword and shield for Fighters or a bow and arrow for Rangers. There are also 50 new character heads added to the in-game mix, although they're mainly elf and human heads because they are the most popular races.

So you can see all of the action and admire all of those new heads (at least the back of them), there's a new over-the-shoulder cam, which is much closer to your characters than ever before. Whereas you were limited to a birds-eye view of the game in the original, the over-the-shoulder cam allows you to drop the camera down right behind the characters, getting you closer to the action. Bioware also hopes to immerse players in the game through the use of several in-game cutscenes, complete with panning camera for dramatic effect. This allows the developers at Bioware to tell the story without having to pop you out of the game for a pre-rendered movie.

However, perhaps the biggest new graphical touch is the addition of skyboxes to the game. No, not the premium seats at the ballgame, but rather an actual realistic looking sky added to the game, complete with clouds and a transitioning day-night cycle. Although the skyboxes won't be very evident in Hordes of the Underdark since most of your time will be spent in underground dungeons like Undermountain and Underdark, module builders will be able to use them in their own adventures (along with around 150 new scripting functions) to add more depth to their outdoor creations.

As if all this wasn't enough for a $30 expansion pack, the audio is getting a slight upgrade as well, with six new voice sets, three male and three female. The game will also feature around 30 minutes of brand new music from Jeremy Soule.

Overall, Hordes of the Underdark is going to be pretty long for an expansion pack, and should take somewhere between 20 to 30 hours to complete. If everything goes as planned, it should be out by the end of this year.

Be sure to check back often for more on Hordes of the Underdark before its release, and as always, if you're interested in learning everything about the world of Neverwinter Nights, be sure to drop by IGN's Neverwinter Vault for ongoing coverage of the game as well as thousands of downloads, from full modules to scripts to hakpacks.